NASA Canaries

Science
Science brain teasers require understanding of the physical or biological world and the laws that govern it.

NASA was considering sending canaries into space to study them under zero gravity. The project was scrapped when someone realized that in spite of having sufficient water supplies, they could die of dehydration within a few hours. Why?

It is not about knowing the teaser answers, it is about learning from the answer!
This is a very good info.
For example if you had a science fair about birds,i am sure that you will be the only one presenting this strange fact.
Very nice teaser, and most important, thanx for this precious fact
If you have some more than please let us see them soon.

I knew he wouldn't be able to drink because of his beak. I didn't really figure out WHY. They put water in their beak and tip their beak up and let the water slide down their throats. So, of course, they would need gravity.
Interesting. Never thought about that.

Wouldn't the validation of that fact be one of the things studied by putting the canary into space. I mean until you put the canary in space (or remove gravity by someother means) you can't be 100% sure they need gravity to swallow.

Presumably, I'd also imagine it would be a huge problem to teach a bird brain how and where to access the water supply which would need to be kept in a dispenser of some type anyway. I mean chimps and dogs etc would be no problem.

I'm thinking we need to "intubate" the little fellas straight to their stomachs and tape the tubes in place for the duration.

Wait - this was just a fun puzzle not an engineering challenge. My bad.

I guessed because the water will evaporate too fast. However I think this should be under "trivia" and not under" teasers". As someone said, "if you do not study birds you would never know this. It is definitely informative, and a little bit of trivia.

I much prefer puzzles that require you to think, to those that require you to have some random fact stored somewhere in your mental filing cabinet. As it was, the random fact needed to solve this "puzzle" happened to be in my filing cabinet, and was easily retrievable. BFD.

I think you have to KNOW this answer, not figure it out. I would also wonder where they would have the water available for the little birdies. If not confined in a container the water would float all over the place.